From the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0bestselling author of\u00a0The Romanov Sisters<\/em> comes the story of a courageous young Imperial Grand Duchess who scandalized Europe in search of freedom. Read on for a featured excerpt from The Rebel Romanov<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n In May 1816, at the Prince Regent\u2019s Carlton House residence in London, an obscure German prince married the most sought-after royal bride in Europe \u2013 Princess Charlotte of Wales, second in line to the throne of Great Britain after her father, the Prince Regent. During the ceremony, held in the Crimson Drawing Room at 9 p.m., there had been barely stifled amusement \u2013 even to the bride herself \u2013 when, at the point when the couple exchanged vows, she heard her fairytale prince solemnly promise to endow her with all his worldly goods. For Charlotte knew full well that her new husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was the scion of a cash-strapped <\/span>\u2018Pumpernickel-Staat\u2019<\/span><\/i>,<\/span>\u00a0\u2018a younger prince of Coburg [whose] whole income was only \u00a3200 sterling\u2019.<\/span> All Leopold had in reality to offer his bride beyond his seductive good looks and his distinguished military credentials were his guile and ruthless ambition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, the \u2018Coburg Marriage\u2019 \u2013 as it was dismissively referred to by the British aristocracy \u2013 was no mean achievement for an unremarkable German principality that in the political scheme of things had long been \u2018lost on the map of Europe\u2019 and on which the press had until then been entirely silent.<\/span> Leopold\u2019s marriage to Britain\u2019s favourite princess was an incredible coup for a minor European prince and brought the couple an annual allowance of \u00a360,000 (over \u00a36 million today), which was more than the entire annual revenue of his debt-ridden home country \u2013 a tiny, rural principality tucked away in central Germany. Its rulers could claim descent from one of the ancient European dynasties \u2013 the Saxon House of Wettin \u2013 that had once ruled much of the region, but successive divisions of the territory between the male heirs of the Ernestine branch <\/span>had fragmented the region into a complex tapestry of domains subject to periodic reshuffling. Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in fact comprised two small territories that were geographically separated: Coburg, the dynastic seat, lay in Upper Franconia just south of the Thuringian Forest while Saalfeld, which lay on the other side of the forest in the principality of Schwarzburg, was added through marriage and purchase in 1699.<\/span><\/p>\n By 1801, the status and power of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld had atrophied considerably, leaving it shackled by debt and reduced to a combined military strength of only 150 musketeers and grenadiers and a militia of one battalion of 360 men. <\/span>Much of this debt had been the result of profligate spending and mismanagement of the Coburg coffers by successive dukes, who had ruled the region along old feudal lines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n During the terrible depredations wreaked across Europe in the Napoleonic Wars, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was caught in the crosshairs, a perpetual victim of incursions by transient Napoleonic troops; for a while, the ducal family had had to flee their capital for the safer location of Saalfeld. Nevertheless, Leopold and his two brothers Ernst and Ferdinand had \u2018exerted themselves, as far as they were able, for the emancipation of Germany\u2019 in the final push against Napoleon during 1813\u201314: Ernst with the Prussians in Berlin, Ferdinand with the Austrians in Vienna, and Leopold in service to Emperor Alexander I of Russia in Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n As the youngest son of a duchy that had adopted the law of primogeniture, and who was thus well down the pecking order below his two older brothers, Leopold needed to seek his fortune abroad and it was Russia that had set him on the ladder. His military record had been exemplary: enrolled as an honorary cadet in the Russian Imperial Guard at the age of five by Catherine the Great, Leopold\u2019s advancement thereafter, as the first German prince to join the Russian army, had been meteoric. In 1810, he had resigned under pressure from Napoleon but was reintegrated in the Russian forces by May 1813, after which he led his regiment of Russian cuirassiers in cavalry charges against French forces at the battles of L\u00fctzen and Bautzen in Saxony and scored his most significant military success at the battle of Kulm on 30 August. By this time, Alexander I and his Prussian and Austrian allies had all acknowledged the merit of Leopold\u2019s services, and \u2018six or eight Orders were conferred on him\u2019, including the prestigious order of St Alexander Nevsky and the crosses of St George and Maria Theresa and the Iron Cross of Prussia for his role at Kulm.<\/span><\/p>\n Prince Leopold was also present at the military engagement outside Paris on 31 March 1814 that saw the final defeat of Napoleon, an honour that brought him in the victors\u2019 parade into Paris itself and on to England that June with the allied sovereigns of Prussia and Russia. <\/span>When he arrived in London, Leopold, who couldn\u2019t afford a hotel and was staying above a grocer\u2019s shop in Marylebone, was already pondering a game plan that had been sown in his mind by the tsar.<\/span> Having had to abandon his \u2018fruitless passion\u2019 for Empress Josephine\u2019s \u2018pale, pensive and <\/span>spirituelle<\/span><\/i>\u2019 daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, he found himself now in pursuit of \u2018a ruddy buxom girl, more German, perhaps, in her appearance than Leopold could have wished\u2019.<\/span> For Alexander had apparently informed Leopold privately not long before they left for England that \u2018I intend for you to marry Princess Charlotte, the future Queen of England.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0Alexander\u2019s clever widowed sister, Ekaterina Pavlovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, who was then staying in London, took the plan to the next level. She befriended Princess Charlotte and contrived a meeting between the classically tall and dark Leopold and the boisterously endearing eighteen-year-old princess. This unwished-for encounter, as far as he was concerned, would soon turn the Prince Regent\u2019s own dynastic ambitions for his daughter upside down, as well as providing Russia with an important influence at the British court in the person of Leopold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Charlotte had recently broken off her engagement to her father\u2019s choice of husband, the affable but dull Prince Wilhelm of Orange. She had reluctantly agreed to the engagement in December 1813 in the cause of a strategic Dutch\u2013British political alliance, but had then been distracted by a short-lived passion for Prince Friedrich of Prussia. When this fizzled out, attempts were made to steer Charlotte back in the direction of the Prince of Orange but she had resisted this on discovering that, as wife of the heir to the Dutch throne, she would have to live in the Netherlands for most of the time. In any case, by the summer of 1814, the ambitious Leopold \u2013 whom even Napoleon had remarked upon as being \u2018one of the handsomest young men I ever saw\u2019 \u2013 had arrived at court and had begun to work his charm on her.<\/span><\/p>\n By this time, Charlotte was growing increasingly rebellious, desperate for release from her father\u2019s stifling control; her liking for \u2018Der Leo\u2019, as she affectionately called him, soon turned to fascination and then to a very determined passion.<\/span>\u00a0By early 1815, and despite the Regent\u2019s stubborn opposition, she had become convinced that of all the many suitors for her most eligible hand, Leo was the one who \u2018from his situation & everything I have heard of him is the most elagible [<\/span>sic<\/span><\/i>] connexion for me now . . . I <\/span>delight<\/span><\/i> in Coburg because I am <\/span>quite satisfied he is really<\/span><\/i>, truly & sincerely attached to <\/span>me<\/span><\/i> & very much so desirous to the greatest degree to [do] all in his power to make me happy.\u2019 <\/span>Charlotte, who was notoriously headstrong and called the shots as the only legitimate child in line to the throne at that time, refused to give him up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Leopold\u2019s German ducal credentials might not have been grand enough for the English royals, but at least he was from a ruling family, and no one could doubt the good prince\u2019s moral and intellectual character, his \u2018dignified gravity and unusual moderation\u2019, though privately the Prince Regent found his putative son-in-law cautious and pedantic, and later nicknamed him \u2018Marquis Peu-\u00e0-Peu\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0But there was more to Leopold than initially met the eye: a cold intellect and logic lurking beneath the ingratiating fa\u00e7ade, indicative of a determination to advance the interests and ascendancy of the Saxe-Coburgs in Europe.<\/span>\u00a0For her own part, Charlotte had no intention of allowing this unequal royal match to diminish her: \u2018Do not imagine that, in marrying Prince Leopold, I ever can or will sink to the rank of <\/span>Mistress Coburg<\/span><\/i>. Entertain no such idea, I beg of you.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0She was already intimating her intention, when the time came, of seeing her German husband elevated beyond the role of mere consort, an aspiration nursed by Leopold himself. For, as the English diarist Henry Greville observed, he \u2018would do anything to be beking\u2019d\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n When news broke on 10 February 1816 that \u2018notice ha[d] been sent to the Court of Coburg of an intended union between the Princess Charlotte of Wales and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, third son of the reigning Duke\u2019, Leopold was so little known in England that even these basic facts were wrong. His father had died in 1806 and his brother Ernst was now on the throne.<\/span>\u00a0The British aristocracy were contemptuous: \u2018He is after all but a petty Prince for the heiress to the British throne,\u2019 sneered Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury. Yet for all that, the Coburg marriage was \u2018the only genteel Topic of Conversation\u2019 in London society at the time.<\/span>\u00a0It wasn\u2019t until November that anyone was the wiser, when Frederic Shoberl\u2019s <\/span>Historical Account of the House of Saxony<\/span><\/i>, containing a chapter on Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was brought out for public consumption, outlining the prince\u2019s illustrious genealogy and career.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n Leopold arrived at Dover by packet boat from the Continent on 19 February 1816 for his wedding to Charlotte. Until the ceremony on 2 May, he stayed at the Clarendon Hotel in New Bond Street, a respectable venue for \u2018single gentlemen\u2019.<\/span> Public curiosity had been \u2018wound up to the highest pitch\u2019 by the time Leopold, dressed in his splendid general\u2019s \u2018regimentals\u2019\u00a0 \u2013 having been newly elevated to that rank by the Prince Regent \u2013 gratified the eager throngs waiting outside Clarence House by making his appearance to the sound of their \u2018stentorian huzzas\u2019. But the congregation for the wedding at nearby Carlton House was small by royal standards. Only fifty hand-picked dignitaries\u00a0 \u2013 foreign ambassadors, cabinet ministers, and members of the British royal family and nobility\u00a0 \u2013 were in attendance.<\/span>\u00a0No foreign royalty were there, nor even the bride\u2019s mother \u2013 from whom the Regent was estranged. Travel in the days before the railways was slow and difficult; Prince Leopold\u2019s scattered family was represented by the Saxon minister in London, who signed the marriage certificate, for nobody from Leopold\u2019s home country was present to witness this moment of triumph for the House of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Not least among the absentees was Leopold\u2019s older sister Julie, for she it was who, through her own politically strategic marriage to Catherine the Great\u2019s grandson Grand Duke Konstantin in 1796, had made all this possible. For that union had brought exceptional honours and preferment not just to Leopold but to the whole family; more importantly, it had brought Saxe-Coburg under the protective wing of the Russian Empire. Julie, the beloved sister, sacrificed on the altar of dynastic expediency in a strange, foreign land at the age of only fourteen, had given a huge boost to the military careers of all three of her brothers, and with it the family\u2019s favour with the Romanovs. She had been the first of the seven Saxe-Coburg siblings \u2013 the surviving children of Duke Franz and Duchess Auguste \u2013 to wed; between 1796 and 1818 they achieved a spectacular succession of marriages that turned this obscure family into the king- and queenmakers of post-Napoleonic Europe, placing their progeny \u2018upon thrones, next to thrones, or behind thrones\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n By the time of his marriage, Leopold was already on the high road to international power and influence. Coburg, that insignificant \u2018archipelago of princes\u2019, as Catherine the Great\u2019s lover Prince Grigory Potemkin had once scornfully referred to it, achieved yet more dynastic success that same year, when Leopold\u2019s brother Ferdinand married the daughter and sole heir of the wealthiest man in the Austrian Empire.<\/span> A sister, Antoinette, was installed in the Russian court not long after Julie as the wife of Duke Alexander of W\u00fcrttemberg, brother of the German-born dowager empress. But it was the youngest sister, Victoire, who in 1818 scored the ultimate triumph by marrying Princess Charlotte\u2019s uncle and a son of King George III, the Duke of Kent. A year later, she gave birth to a future monarch\u00a0 \u2013 Queen Victoria\u00a0 \u2013 who would bring the Saxe-Coburg story full circle in 1840 by marrying her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It is not surprising, therefore that few were aware then, as is the case even today, of the existence of the lost Saxe-Coburg sister, Princess Juliane Henriette Ulrike, who set in train the inexorable rise of the Coburgs. By 1854, Julie\u2019s story, such of it as was known even then, had reached the levels of myth: \u2018Who was this modern Iphigenia? \u2013 this Ariadne given up to the Minotaur? \u2013 this Andromeda whom no Perseus came to rescue?\u2019 thundered the <\/span>Dublin Weekly Nation<\/span><\/i> in an excess of indignant hyperbole. \u2018You\u2019ll search for her in vain in any list of the Russian royal family. For Heaven\u2019s sake, who was she?\u2019 For the world knew nothing of this \u2018poor doomed rosebud\u2019 who had been \u2018torn from the nursery\u2019 to further the Saxe-Coburg cause; nor of the high personal price she had had to pay in the cause of her mother Auguste\u2019s overweening ambitions in securing her marriage into the Russian imperial family. As historian Johann Heinrich Schnitzler observed: \u2018Such was the attraction of an imperial crown, that it overbalanced love of country, attachment to religious faith, and the apprehension which the state of things in Russia might then well cause.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Uprooted from her quiet and uneventful life in Coburg and abandoned unceremoniously, alone and friendless, in Catherine the Great\u2019s St Petersburg, Julie was stripped of her German birth name, which was supplanted by the alien, talismanic title of Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna of Russia, or the even more anonymising Grand Duchess Konstantin. But among her family, she was always known as J\u00fclchen \u2013 \u2018little Julie\u2019 \u2013 and the affectionate form of her name extended even to Queen Victoria, who spoke very fondly, and often, of her dear aunt \u2018Julia\u2019 and never referred to her by her Russian name. We shall use \u2018Julie\u2019 throughout this narrative, which charts the span of her difficult, elusive and often tragic life, much of it lived effectively as an exile, in avoidance of gossip and scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Anna_Fedorovna_by_unknown-248x300.jpg\")
PROLOGUE\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
The Coburg Marriage<\/b><\/h3>\n
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